Every story has a beginning, and I’ve decided to go back in time  to paint the pictures for you. The one that leads up to all of my crazy decisions in life. My therapist thinks this is a good idea. Maybe in telling this story we will crack the code on all of my boy drama and horrible romantic decisions. If we don’t crack the code, we should at least get in a few good chuckles and a little annoyance at the ways of people.

We’re going to take a trip back to elementary school (5th grade to be exact) when things were innocent and sweet. Back to spending the night at my friends house. My friend happened to have a twin brother who also had a friend (let’s call him…Junior) spending the night. We ran through the house, rowdily knocking into the walls and making their parents crazy.

In all the wrestling and giggling, something else was at work inside me. Junior was really sweet and funny. He played football and kept getting aggravated that I could pin him to the ground when we would wrestle. I made a mental note of how cute he was, but really spent little time thinking about it. He wasn’t in my class at school… so he wasn’t datable. Later on I would tell my best friend (I am still trying to work out a nickname for her, we’ll come back to that) about him, and wouldn’t you know, he was in her class and she liked him too.

The year would finish out without me seeing Junior again, which didn’t have much affect on me. But when 6th grade started, along with lockers and changing classrooms throughout the day, Junior would enter back into my life, and this time he would stay. We became best friends. Inseperable.

He called me nightly to talk about school, football practice, Super Tecmo Ball on Nintendo, and our friends. I looked forward to those phone calls, they came at the same time every night. We passed notes at school… back and forth constantly. He came up to the ballpark to watch our softball games. I was hooked. He was respectful to my parents, made good grades… what else could I want?

Then the phone call changed. During our nightly chat, he seemed nervous on the phone. I just knew he was about to ask me to be his girlfriend. As I sat there squeezing the life out of the phone, nerves rattled… I waited. Then the words came… he had feelings for… her…. (guess it’s time to nickname best friend from above… let’s call her #$$%^…. hehehe just kidding, let’s call her Jessica). He wanted to know if I could talk to her for him.

ME?!?!?!

Help land you a girlfriend????

Of course I will…*FACEPALM*

I hung up the phone with my heart beat pounding in my ears. I had just agreed to find out how Jessica felt about him. But I already knew… that she liked him too.  Within a week they were our school’s new cutest couple. My stomach churned.

Jessica was beautiful, a little miss pageant girl… all the guys talked about her. They all wanted her. It became difficult for me to see what he saw in her, they seemed to have nothing in common. He still called me nightly, the conversation never ending. When they would talk on the phone, there was a lot of silent, cricket chirping… yet I was standing there watching him fall in love with her. I could see it in his eyes. He was gone.

I had kept my emotions in check as much as I could. I tried to pretend I didn’t care, that I wasn’t dying inside. That I didn’t constantly wonder how, or why they were together. They would date for all three of our middle school years. I hung out somewhere  in the middle of their relationship. I guarded him. I passed their notes back and forth for them. When they would argue, I was caught in the middle… as if they both spoke different languages that only I could decipher for the other. Sometimes I considered changing the messages… but I could never do it, because it would crush him.

My other friends stood by, watching me torture myself. I was never going to have him. Didn’t I get that? Would I give up this hopeless chase?